Jefferson’s Summary View blamed England for American slavery to deflect hypocrisy

Evidence

His majesty, said the author, had rejected our “great object of desire” to abolish slavery and the slave trade, and thus disregarded “the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.” Some politicians folded over in disgust as they took in Thomas Jefferson’s rhetorical gunshot at slavery. But “several of the author’s admirers” loved his clever turn: he had blamed England for American slavery. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 259

Categorization

• XREF: A rich case for the reader’s testing of Kendi: here self-interest produces a self-serving narrative (blaming England) rather than a racist idea per se — worth comparing to how Kendi frames idea-production.
• SEED: Angle: ‘blame displacement’ as a rhetorical mechanism in founding documents — how the nation’s foundational texts externalized slavery onto the colonizer.